


around - across - upon

by Gleaming_Spires (cuppaktea)



Category: History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Suicide Attempt, attitudes towards suicide, basically Dakin's caring side shouldn't be allowed out of the house, myths around suicide attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 19:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14244036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuppaktea/pseuds/Gleaming_Spires
Summary: The nurse had shooed them away from the ICU window when they arrived, ushering them as far as the next corridor, where they’ve been for most of the night now.





	around - across - upon

**Author's Note:**

> I actually don't know what came over me, normal fluff service will be restored shortly.
> 
> (Title is from an Emily Dickinson poem that has always spoken to my less-well side)

 

 

Don is slumped in a hard plastic chair in the corridor. His back aches, has been aching for hours, but somehow shifting positions is too much effort to contemplate. He scratches with his thumbnail against the roughened blue surface of the seat. It’s covered with scratches, old and new. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders how many other thumbnails have done the same thing -  if they all belonged to someone sitting, like him, in a limbo of desperate hope and terrible dread, their worlds reduced to scuff marks on the lino and damp marked ceiling tiles, jittery limbs and a sick feeling in their stomach. Useless adrenaline and backache serving to remind them they were still alive.

 

_The Catholics have it right_ , he thinks. _Purgatory **is** real, but instead of the afterlife, it exists in hospital corridors and waiting rooms_.

 

Lifting his head he’s grateful for the sight of Dakin coming down the corridor.

 

It’s Dakin who found him, in a stupid twist of fate too clichéd for fiction. Unusually for Dakin, he had left something to the last minute (an essay, a project, Don didn’t really take in the details and Dakin was talking so fast anyway). Pos had a book Dakin wanted.

 

If Dakin hadn’t (for the first time in his life) forgotten his deadline, if he hadn’t seen the book on the shelf weeks ago and remembered it, if he’d decided to go round to Pos’ room after dinner, if he wasn’t such a pushy bastard and had just walked away when there was no answer. All the what ifs chase each other round Don’s brain. He knocks his head gently on the wall behind him to try and make them stop.

 

Dakin hands him a miniature Styrofoam cup of coffee - lukewarm and hideously sweet and welcome.

 

“Have they let you see him yet?” He sits down in the chair opposite, clutching its twin.

 

“No. And they won’t. Only his parents are allowed unless he gives permission, or they do.”

 

“Why are we still here then?”

 

“In case he wakes up and gives us permission. In case his mum arrives and says I can see him – in case… Just in case, alright?”

 

Dakin shrugs in surrender.

 

“I s’pose it’ll be late now.”

 

Don closes his eyes, can’t even pretend to care about Dakin’s essay, except for as a catalyst.

 

“You don’t have to stay.”

 

“Neither do you.” Dakin says and they both go back to staring past each other, at the dog-eared posters on the walls.

 

There’s a clock somewhere. Don can’t see it from his position but it ticks ominous and loud from its hidden vantage point. Don finishes his coffee and absently folds the edges of the cup inwards.

 

“Tom tried to kill himself. He told me. When he was a teenager. Stupid bastard called the ambulance himself.”

 

“He definitely wouldn’t want me to know that.”

 

“I’m only trying to show some support.”

 

“Your boyfriend making a half-arsed suicide attempt years before you even met him doesn’t mean you know what it feels like.” That’s what he should say.

 

Or maybe not, he doesn’t know the circumstances, after all. Shouldn’t belittle it.

 

“Don’t.” He says instead.

 

“I’m just saying – he’s fine now, yeah.”

 

Scripps gives him a tight smile.

 

“He left the door open. That must mean he wanted to be found right? It’s a cry for help, if he meant it to work he would have locked himself in.”

 

Don grits his teeth. “I don’t know, Dakin.”

 

_A cry for help_. That’s a laugh. Don would have helped gladly, thinks he would have done anything. Why hadn’t Pos just asked?

 

Or had he, and Don just never noticed? After all this time did he just expect Pos to be miserable? Was he really such a selfish bastard that he’d thought it was ok for him to be down because he couldn’t remember him being any different?

 

Actually, he knows that isn’t true because he’d really honestly thought that since the two of them had finally got together David was happier than Don had ever known him to be. So he’s back to the first question and how could he not have noticed?

 

“Did something happen? Something we don’t know about?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

The thought makes him feel sick with vague horror. If only Dakin would stop stirring up the worst of his thoughts the waiting might be easier.

 

He’s folded the cup in on itself completely, only the flat base left to fidget with now. Wishes he could throw it hard against the opposite wall, but he’s always been too law-abiding for that sort of behaviour. Disgusted with himself, he stands up and goes in search of a bin, relishing the feeling as the bones of his spine clunk back into their proper place as he walks.

 

He thinks he'd like to sit in the chapel again, but it’s on the other side of the hospital and he daren’t go further than the next corridor.

 

Folding himself back into the too-small chair he recites the Lord’s Prayer in his head a few times. It helps.

 

“Fancy another peep?”

 

Dakin’s voice cuts through his thoughts once more, but it’s a good idea so he doesn’t complain.

 

“Yeah ok.”

 

The nurse had shooed them away from the ICU window when they arrived, ushering them as far as the next corridor, where they’ve been for most of the night now.

 

When they get to the window the only person they can see in the unit is an elderly lady, small and skeletal in a bed next to the nurse’s station. A curtain blocks their view of David’s bed, along with most of the others, presumably for the night.

 

“Is that a good sign?”

 

Scripps shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

 

The nurse catches sight of them through the window and waves them away. Not that there’s much point in staring at a curtain anyway.

 

They head back around the corner to their corridor.

 

“These chairs are fucking torture.” Dakin, sitting next to him this time, twists trying to get comfortable.

 

Don wonders why he’s even bothering to try and achieve the impossible, but otherwise ignores him.

 

“Do you think he meant it?”

 

“I _don’t know,_ Dakin.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Don watches as Dakin settles into studying a poster about drink driving wearing a contemplative frown.

 

“Don’t.”

 

“Don’t what?”

 

“Whatever it is you’re going to say, just do me a favour and don’t.”

 

Dakin folds his arms and sighs.

 

The ticking clock sounds like it’s right next to his ear. Whose idea was it to make sure the bloody thing could be heard across town anyway? He counts the ticks as far as one hundred. Then does it again, backwards, this time.

 

He tries counting them up to a thousand but loses count somewhere around the seven hundreds.

 

Beside him, Dakin squirms uncomfortably, draws a breath to speak and stops. Repeats the process.

 

Don closes his eyes.

 

“Did he say something to you?”

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“You don’t sound very sure.”

 

“He never said _‘Scrippsy, I feel like taking a bottle of paracetamol’_ no. Maybe he said something else that I should have picked up on and I never did.”

 

“Sorry mate, I didn’t mean to suggest – you’re not a bloody mind reader, are you? I just don’t know how this can happen with no warning.”

 

“Dakin. Please shut up.”

 

Dakin goes back to fidgeting silently for a minute. It’s almost as bad as the questions.

 

“Do you want another coffee?”

 

“No.”

 

“Sure? I’m getting one anyway, my arse has gone numb.”

 

Don wishes there was a way he could ask him not to go without sounding mad, because somehow his friend’s absence irks Don even more than his presence.

 

“Alright then, thanks.”

 

Really all he wants is company, something silent and steady and above all calm to keep his thoughts under wraps – certainly not to stir them up with awkward questions. But fear has never had a paralysing force on Dakin, instead, it spurs him to action. _And a good thing too, in the circumstances_. He tells himself. Still, he’s shit as far as comfort goes. What he needs is for David to be sitting beside him, providing a gentle press of shoulders, maybe, or even just silent solidarity.

 

He goes back to the Lord’s Prayer until Dakin returns with more of the shit coffee.

 

“How long has it been now?”

 

“Eight hours. Nine maybe.” Don says, even though he could probably tell him to the second.

 

“Sure you don’t want me to take you home? His parents won’t get here til the morning. It’s a long drive and they’re about a hundred and five.”

 

“I told you, you don’t have to stay.”

 

Dakin shrugs and props his head on one hand, his eyes drifting closed.

 

Don wishes he could sleep, wonders how Dakin can. Wishes he could block out the memory of David’s death-white face and absurdly frail looking body being loaded into the ambulance, resembling a horrible china doll.

 

Instantly he chides himself for the thought. However bad he feels it can be nothing compared to how David must have felt to want to take his own life.

 

If it hadn’t been for Dakin standing at the kerb, looking almost as white as Pos, Don reckons he would have walked straight past the scene without taking a closer look to see who it was.

 

He shudders.

 

Guilt is the overriding feeling. Guilt and anger and bone-chilling fear. They simmer together in his stomach, keeping his eyes wide open even though it’s past four in the morning.

 

The hospital corridor is deserted, has been for hours. Now even Dakin’s shut up and Don finds himself wishing he’d wake up and return to pissing him off.

 

The clock keeps ticking.

 


End file.
